A water-absorbing article has been proposed which is obtainable by forming a functional coating including an urethane resin having water-absorbing property, on a substrate (for example, Patent Documents 1 and 2). In this technique, the water-absorbing article is produced by applying a coating liquid (application liquid) to the substrate and by conducting a drying step and the like. The water-absorbing article proposed in the Patent Document 1 suppresses a fogging of the article by virtue of a water-absorbing property of the coating so that a transparency (visibility) of the article is ensured, even under an environment causing the fogging in an article having no such coating.
Previously, as a liquid-application method for a flat-plate-shaped substrate, a method has been proposed in which the coating liquid is applied on the substrate by supplying the coating liquid from a nozzle. Patent Documents 3 and 4 disclose a method in which a high-viscosity coating liquid is supplied and applied to a horizontally-conveyed substrate, from opening portions of two or more nozzles array. In this case, the high-viscosity application liquid has a viscosity value ranging from 1 to 1000 Pa·s. Moreover, Patent Document 5 discloses a coating-film producing process in which a coating liquid (application liquid) is supplied to a rotating disc-shaped substrate from a plurality of nozzles, so as to apply a uniform quantity of coating liquid per unit area of the substrate, and then, the liquid applied on the substrate is flattened by means of its leveling action.
Patent Document 1: Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 63-500590
Patent Document 2: Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2007-76999
Patent Document 3: Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2001-137760
Patent Document 4: Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2001-137761
Patent Document 5: Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2004-73969